389 papers
Evolutionary biology explores the dynamic history of life on Earth, tracing how species change, adapt, and diversify over time. This field investigates the mechanisms driving everything from the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria to the complex social behaviors of primates, revealing the deep connections that bind all living organisms together.
On Gist.Science, we ensure these groundbreaking discoveries remain accessible by processing every new preprint uploaded to bioRxiv in this category. Our team generates both plain-language overviews and detailed technical summaries for each paper, bridging the gap between raw research and public understanding without requiring a specialized background.
Below are the latest studies in evolutionary biology, offering fresh insights into the ongoing story of life.
This paper demonstrates that the evolution of family-based reputation creates a positive feedback loop between kin selection and indirect reciprocity, thereby expanding the conditions under which cooperation can be sustained, particularly when interactions are infrequent or individual behavior is difficult to observe.
This study demonstrates that Lusitanian wall lizards resolve the trade-off between conspecific communication and predator avoidance through distance-dependent colour-pattern perceptibility, a strategy that is maintained in females and smaller individuals but sacrificed by larger males to prioritize intraspecific signaling.
This study demonstrates that heat stress tolerance in *Lemna minor* is a dynamic trait shaped by the interplay of local genetic adaptation, temperature-dependent physiological acclimation, and the emergence of novel phenotypic variation over time.
This paper presents an eco-evolutionary modelling framework that links genetically determined mosquito traits with spatially structured host environments to demonstrate that host specialisation, particularly anthropophilia, is an environmentally gated process favoured in resource-poor or seasonally varying habitats, offering new insights into the evolution of vector-borne disease transmission.
This study proposes that naturally arising *de novo* open reading frames in *Drosophila melanogaster* frequently encode potential zinc chelators through the translation of (CA) microsatellites into bis-histidine motifs, suggesting that recurrent microsatellite expansion provides a shared evolutionary origin for a distinct class of metal-binding peptides.
This study of East African *Campylobacter* genomes reveals that animal host breadth is not driven by simple measures of genomic exchange or antimicrobial resistance, but rather by complex, lineage-specific interactions between ecological opportunity, selected genetic variations, and population history.
This study demonstrates that artificial selection for copper resistance in *Drosophila melanogaster* results in a fitness benefit characterized by increased longevity and higher lifetime fecundity without incurring reproductive or developmental trade-offs, as copper-resistant females exhibit comparable age-matched egg production and superior developmental viability under copper stress compared to sensitive populations.
This study analyzes 716 Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus sequences from Southern Africa to demonstrate that the SAT1, SAT2, and SAT3 serotypes exhibit distinct evolutionary rates and transmission dynamics, supporting the hypothesis that they employ different life history strategies.
By analyzing ancient DNA from 71 individuals in Zambia and Malawi, this study reveals that the settlement of south central Africa involved a complex, layered history of at least two distinct Bantu expansions radiating from the southern Congo Basin, alongside significant genetic continuity with local pre-Iron Age foragers.
This paper extends the "discretized diffusion approximation" method, originally developed for Brownian motion with reflective limits, to unlock a flexible suite of new phylogenetic models for analyzing both discrete and continuous trait evolution, including threshold, semi-threshold, and joint models where evolutionary rates depend on co-evolving traits.